


Pluto

by ZenzaNightwing



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Steve Friendly, Songfic, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 21:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11366265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenzaNightwing/pseuds/ZenzaNightwing
Summary: (I see a suit of armor around the world.)(he doesn't say, I see pain and fire every time I close my eyes, I burnt my life to pieces and walked out alive, I need to make sure others survive the flames too.)A series of connected drabbles inspired by the lyrics of the song 'Pluto' by Sleeping At Last.





	Pluto

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the lyrics of the song 'Pluto' by Sleeping At Last.
> 
> I do not own the song, or the lyrics, I am using them for no monetary gain. I'm just using them so my muse will stop screaming.

 

 

 

 

_I woke up from the same dream_

 

 

He claws his way to consciousness with a leaden tongue and a scream caught under the heavy weight of the voiceless, paralyzing terror that courses through his veins, worn down from Palladium until they are thin, frail little things. He knows just how frail, of course. Rhodey was the only thing keeping him from figuring out if ever single one of them creeping down his wrist were as fragile as the few he'd experimented on before.

 

He sits up, hands clenched on the sheets, breathing in as much as he can – _not enough, never enough, he can't fucking breathe –_ and letting it out in exhales as large as he can afford to make them, tilting his head back and closing his eyes and hoping to a god he's never really believed in that he doesn't see the flames ever again.

 

The clock, when he finally bothers to look at it, reads 3:17 am.

 

So he gets up, and the molten lead his tongue is now keeps him from calling out for his one constant of a friend.

 

Right.

 

He killed JARVIS. He can't forget that.

 

He's tired.

 

 

_Falling backwards,_

 

 

When he first fell, with the heat of fire on his back and the weight of the souls he just took still processing, he felt like Lucifer, like some kind of angel falling from grace. He felt like curling up into a ball and crying, or dying, but that would spit in Yinsen's face, in his sacrifice.

 

It felt sick. It felt wrong.

 

But he walked away from the wreckage, and let that feeling fester in his mechanical heart.

 

 

_Falling backwards_

 

 

The next time he falls, he does it with the true Devil locked in ice beside him, the one who dragged him down into hell because he was young and naive and oh so smart. He looks at the man he once saw as a better father than his true one was and finds the human that represents the seven deadly sins themselves.

 

And maybe the fall doesn't kill him, but the blistering blue light consumes them both, lights up the world and leaves him still standing.

 

It feels righteous.

 

 

_'til it turned me inside out_

 

 

Sometimes, he forgets that the Arc is a part of him.

 

Other times he forgets that it wasn't always a part of him.

 

They mold together until they're one and the same, until it is merely another thing that makes Tony Stark Iron Man, or Iron Man Tony Stark, until almost everyone else forgets and he gets asked what it's like to be something more than human.

 

He answers with a smile and a joke.

 

He doesn't tell them about how it felt to have a hole ripped in his chest, how he was reborn from blood and sand and dirt and brought back to life by a doctor he has told no one about.

 

He doesn't tell them how he died three times before they got the electromagnet installed, and once more from electrocution before he'd made the Arc.

 

He doesn't tell them how it feels to be unmade.

 

 

_Now I live a waking life_

 

 

He hasn't slept in 52 hours, three minutes, and nine seconds. He knows because he set the timer himself when he first walked down into the lab, hands itching and mind screaming, begging for someone to fill the void before the void filled him. Nietzsche really did have something going for him.

 

He doesn't listen to the soft Irish tones that echo through the lab, coaxing and soft and motherly, because the words aren't right just yet, aren't comfortable in themselves like JARVIS once was.

 

He looks at a new set of specs, makes a noise of distaste and disgust, because _this isn't good enough, do you want them to die, do you want them to leave you like everyone else?_ and sets his trembling hands at this newest task at hand.

 

He builds, he creates. It's what he does.

 

Sometimes he can't help but feel like he's building a staircase to the sun, though. A tower to the sky that no one will live in, that no one will care about.

 

(the next time he goes to Doctor Cho and she asks about what kind of exercises he does when he's outside the suit, he will answer “ones of futility”)

 

(Helen, bless her soul, will only smile and raise an eyebrow until he answers with something else too.)

 

 

_Of looking backwards,_

 

 

The days after his parents deaths leave him jumpy and scared, flinching away from the slightest of things.

 

The days following the funeral are even worse, people chasing his every step to give him apologies until the words “I'm sorry for your loss.” sound like poison to his ears, until “Howard and Maria Stark were great people/parents/innovators.” taste like ash(es to ashes, dust to dust) and blood on his tongue.

 

For a year and for the rest of his life, he doesn't trust a single thing handed to him, remembering the weight of a thousand apologetic hands, the rose that he clutched in his fingers until even the dulled thorns on the rose bit into his numb palm.

 

 

_Looking backwards_

 

 

The press hounds him once he says those words, they chase him through the streets, follow his cars, every waking moment is simply a wave of “Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark, why/how/when did you make your suit?”

 

Every apology and “No comment.” tastes like dust and copper, and the click of camera shutters sounds like gunshots and the voices calling for him, wanting him, asking for him sound like the screams of so many soldiers falling to his own weapons.

 

So his smiles are thin and wide and all teeth because he wants to remind them that he would rip out their throats the god damn _second_ he could.

 

 

_A model citizen of doubt_

 

 

Howard once said he was proud of Tony. He was once naive enough to think it was true.

 

Maria once said Howard loved Tony. He knew it wasn't true, but smiled anyway.

 

Obie once said he was proud of Tony. He was once broken enough to believe him.

 

Pepper once said that she loved Tony. He remembered every _once_ and said “We both know you don't mean it.”

 

 

_Until one day I had enough_

 

 

He was fourteen and broken and afraid, but he wanted to make a _difference_ , goddamnit, and just _try and stop him._

 

So he built himself something new, something made in blood and pain, in metal and the dark things in his brain, in the innocence he never had and the love he doubts he'll ever really get.

 

And when his creation whirls to life to spill one of the half-full energy drinks he's been chugging ever since he got down here and told himself to step forward and _work_ , he smiles and whispers, _it's okay, it's okay,_ until the lights start shutting off for the night and he's sobbing it more to himself than anyone else.

 

But... he did it.

 

He names his creation DUM-E, and to this day it still responds to 'it's okay' by dropping whatever it's doing at the moment (sometimes literally) to give him a bizarre one armed hug.

 

 

_Of this exercise of trust_

 

 

“Don't worry, Tones. I'll catch you.” Rhodey said with absolute certainty, setting his beer off to the side and opening up his arms.

 

“You sure 'bout that?” Tony had countered playfully, but stood up all the same, turning his back to his friend but looking over his shoulder.

 

“Yes. Now c'mon, I don't have all day, genius.” Rhodey said the moniker with no small amount of fondness.

 

So Tony rolled his eyes and faced front, and let himself fall.

 

Rhodey caught him.

 

 

_I leaned in and let it hurt_

 

 

He's kissed far too many people for him to count at this point. He wasn't always the first one too initiate it, but often times enough he was. Sunset Bain was his first mistake. She coaxed him toward her like a scared mouse, brought him in close and bit down like a viper.

 

He's had far too many mistakes after that. When it came to the ones he made in love, he'd stopped caring.

 

Besides, the pain always remained, always a scab itching to be opened, always something eager to reawaken and scratch away at his composure until it was nothing but shreds.

 

He'd always hated/exalted in/despised/loved the pain.

 

 

_And let my body feel the dirt_

 

 

When he first hears the helicopters, he doesn't let himself hope. He keeps trekking on, hoping, hoping, hoping that it was true, but not daring to stop in case he wouldn't be able to start again.

 

He hears them getting closer louder, beating in his ears along with his heartbeat, erratic and uneven and almost painful. They throb in time with his headache, with the ache at the base of his neck, with the burning of his skin.

 

When he sees them he laughs, bright and happy but choked off, hardly believing it.

 

But then they get closer, and the noise gets louder, and suddenly his legs don't want to hold him anymore, and he falls to his knees, and the sand is scorching hot and he wonders how long it would take for it to strip him away into nothing but a skeleton then erode his bones into nothing but dust. He wonders how many skeletons ride on the wind, fly and scatter every day on the whims of this air, this blazing wind that cuts through his thin clothing, makes his Arc feel like it's melting into his skin and bones.

 

And then through blurry eyes, he sees a shadow, an outline, and smells that god awful cologne and that scent of honey that never seems to leave him and feels something inside him just _snap_. There's his voice, saying something with that edge of dry humor and that worry, and then his arms are around Tony, and for the first time since he died/was born/was betrayed/lived he felt _safe_.

 

“Rhodey.” He whispered, and let the ground and the darkness claim him.

 

 

_When I break pattern, I break ground_

 

 

He tells Obie one day, that he's tabling some of the weapon designs, that he's got something big in the works, and that's the first time Obie's yelled at him since his parents died. So he flinches back and promises that he won't shove his fathers legacy in the corner, won't destroy what he made because he's _a lazy know it all who won't get off his ass to keep this company going-_ and goes back into the workshop with a heavy heart (but at least he had one).

 

He doesn't sleep for two days, then only naps a bit before continuing on, because if he doesn't have time to stop his other projects for this one, then he will make enough time to do both.

 

The StarkPhone prototype is introduced at the next board meeting, and Tony thinks he sees Obie clench his fists on the report before relaxing. Obie smirks when Tony announces his other weapon prototypes too.

 

 

_I rebuild when I break down_

 

 

He is reborn five times in that cave of horrors, in that place where the man met mind and both broke each other in the ensuing battle, in that place where blood watered stone sprouted ideas, where fire burnt and water steamed until a tempered weapon was left behind.

 

The first three happen on the operating table, each seen over by Yinsen's perfectly steady as he tries to fix the unfixable, do the impossible, as he invents a new solution and makes a new man. The fourth happens when the trough of water they used to make him talk/answer/agree met the car battery saving his life.

 

The fifth is by watching the light flee from a martyr's eyes. The fifth precedes flames and flight, and what a gorgeous phoenix he makes before the sands reclaim him as its own.

 

Stark men are made of iron, are made of gold, are made of steel, are made of vibranium and adamantium, are made of power and politics and energy and innovation.

 

The Arc becomes him, he becomes the Arc, his own personal savior, and he flies above the tumultuous waves, because maybe Noah never had to build a boat, maybe he was one letter off from the answer.

 

And when he gets back to his lab, he lets the phoenix thrive, let it build from the ashes.

 

It's only right, after all.

 

 

_I wake up more awake than I've ever been before_

 

 

Tony wakes up one night with no rhyme or reason, no thought or action behind his consciousness, just terror. There's no sense to why he feels so afraid, just that _he is._

 

He sucks in air, runs fingers through messy hair, rubs painful circles over his Arc, and knows with absolute certainty he won't be able to fall asleep again. He pulls on the first shirt he sees, the pair of ratty jeans made his, worn in a way unique to him.

 

He steps out, and on his way down to the lab, he realizes exactly why he's so afraid.

 

He has people around him again, people he hasn't been around for long enough to truly like them, to truly trust them more than the cursory stuff that he lets everyone know to _think_ they've got a grasp on the true Tony Stark, to see what they're going to do with it.

 

One has already betrayed him, another indirectly helped to kill the only Agent he will ever consider anything close to a friend. One almost leveled a town without even trying, the other hurts to even look at. And the final one, the one he feels he could get close to reasonably easily doesn't even trust himself.

 

 _How long this time?_ He has to wonder, voice sardonic and cold.

 

_How long until they try to break me?_

 

 

_Still, I'm pinned under the weight of what I believed would keep me safe_

 

 

A bad flood, an earthquake, a terrorist attack, a tornado, a hurricane, _anything_ , and everyone looks to the sky for Iron Man. If he's lucky, if he can fall asleep, he'll get woken up by JARVIS, get told to suit up, and he'll still have three hours to run on before he can collapse back on his bed. It lessens after New York, the media isn't asking _Where is Iron Man in this time of crisis?_ Instead the headlines read about aliens, about conspiracy theorists proven right, about the massive protests and the global summit, about the repercussions and the causes, about whether the Chitauri will come back.

 

But still, they ask for him, expect him, and every time he comes back just a little more weighted, just a little more jaded, with a few more bruises and a few more casualties on his conscience. _We are not soldiers._ He had told Steve, and he was right. But they became soldiers the moment they stepped off the damn Helicarrier and into the apocalypse.

 

He remembers each of their names. He remembers the nameless. He remembers the faces of the ones that died before he could reach him and were never identified.

 

He remembers, and he drinks to their names and their faces, and lets it all crush him into nothing.

 

 

_So show me where my armor ends_

 

 

It's curious sometimes, how they see Iron Man and Tony Stark as two different people, two different beings, two different minds and personalities and ambitions. And then, when it serves them, they choose to realize that they are one and the same, that every mistake of one echoes on the other as they treat one like a god and the other as a nuisance too smart for his own good.

 

Sometimes he wants to scream at them, beg them for the answer to the question he never stopped wanting the answer to. _Where does the deity of metal and fire and justice fall away into nothing but another inventor? Where does Tony Stark go when the armor comes on?_

 

It's a bit like asking a child where the sun goes when it's behind a cloud, or when night time comes.

 

Sometimes he wants to disappear like they think he does when the faceplate comes over.

 

Sometimes he craves to end.

 

 

_Show me where my skin begins_

 

 

Palladium poisoning _is_ a horrible way to die. It burns you from the inside out, makes it almost impossible to eat without throwing up, throwing the brain into murky shadows and sharp relief simultaneously until you can't bridge the gap between reality and illusion.

 

Sometimes, when he wants to see, not just know when the end is coming, he'll take off his layers and simply look at the Arc. Look at the masterpiece he made that's slowly killing him until he feels sick, look at the veins filled with black poison, with dead things and dark things, the maze of it all, he'll cover the Arc with his hand and likes to imagine that it's gone, that instead of dying from the venom his own heart gives, it's just the shrapnel they could never get out.

 

He thinks about the tiny pieces of metal inside, about his machine for a heart, and remembers the burning question, _What's it like to be more than human?_

 

A burden, a curse, a brand.

 

It's miserable, really.

 

 

_Like a final puzzle piece, it all makes perfect sense to me_

 

 

Tony doesn't deal with fear that freezes someone to the spot very well. There's a reason for that.

 

To be paralyzed is a terrible thing, to watch the world around you move as you can't, to feel well and truly helpless, but for him it was even worse. His mind compensated for the sudden lack of movement, bursting with information, with calculations, and then the world slowed down and became utterly clear.

 

Betrayal. It's a bit like cyanide, deadly for everyone, but detectable only by a few.

 

His heart gets ripped out of his chest, the one he made new and proud and _better_ , but that doesn't matter.

 

When he finally puts the old Arc in place, his veins sing again, just like they had for his newest model.

 

But, he supposes, the newest model will have to do with just a swan song.

 

 

_The heaviness that I hold in my heart belongs to gravity_

 

 

He makes it a bit of a habit of going to the top of whatever building he's currently partying at when the celebration starts to slow down and there's no one there he's willing to risk sleeping with. At first it was innocent, just a place to go to escape his mother and father and their legacy hanging over him like a guillotine.

 

And then it became almost another math problem. Calculate the approximate height of the building, the wind, people below, how hard was the ground, was it grass or concrete or asphalt. What way he would have to be oriented, if he would have to jump or fall.

 

Calculating the way to die easiest.

 

One of the few reasons he didn't go up on the roof that night in Bern was that he'd already been up there and determined that it was a perfectly good roof for dying on.

 

He didn't tell Aldrich that, though.

 

 

_The heaviness that I hold in my heart is crushing me_

 

 

Sometimes he's almost angry at himself for not letting the Palladium take him, for having given up a perfectly good way out, given away a perfectly good excuse to die.

 

He looks out at the world now, hissing and spitting at him, hurling curses and abuse, looks at the ones he thought might be his friends, and finds them all turning away from him to care for a witch with red at her fingertips and grief in her heart. _Here is where you break._ That voice says, the same one that woke him with terror at having so many so close.

 

 _No,_ he says back, and lets them do as they will. He builds until he can't and keeps building. He makes and innovates and creates, and lets them live in their world where Tony Stark is an unreasonable villain, where none of them made mistakes they can't justify, but his require no prior information before the guilty verdict comes in.

 

_Here is where I rise._

 

 

_I've been worried all my life_

 

 

He looks at the world as a child, and feels the anxiety sink into his bones until they break, looks at the places his father's weapons go, looks at the changing politics of a changing time, looks at the death and the disease and the hunger and the poverty and feels a scream that will never come to fruition rise up in his throat.

 

Then Ana Jarvis gets the diagnosis, and suddenly he is worried for her.

 

And then he watches Jarvis, worried for him after Ana's funeral.

 

And then comes MIT and suddenly all he has to worry about are exams and the newest party gossip.

 

But then his parents die, and suddenly he's drowning, he's suffocating and he _can't get out-_

 

It's become his one constant.

 

 

_A nervous wreck most of the time_

 

 

He says a word, regrets it, and suddenly it's the next headline for a hundred newspapers. He mentions an offhand thing to someone once, and suddenly it's everywhere. He tries to go anywhere with friends and colleagues and the gossip rags say he's dating them, and suddenly Susan from Accounting won't make eye contact or say more than three words in sequence to him.

 

So he learns to keep a rug in his mind and sweep everything under it until it's three feet off the ground, hiding a massive pile of doubt and hatred.

 

He lets the terror claim him until his head is just barely above water and he realizes that he can't swim.

 

Then he lets himself drown in it.

 

 

_I've always been afraid of heights_

 

 

Well, it's more human error than heights that he's afraid of. Roller coasters? No, they've been tested and tried a thousand times before, they have harnesses and locks and seatbelts, so he's fine with those. His suit? While there is, admittedly, more human error involved in that, no, he's not afraid. He has JARVIS flying with him, telling him where to go, how to go there, he's there as a safety net.

 

Airplanes, helicopters? Still machine, but more human behind machine than anything else, so there's that gnawing sense of fear, but you have a metal casing around you, wires and a black box so everyone will still know exactly why it happened.

 

But buildings, mountains, tall trees? No, he doesn't trust those. He's looked over the edge a thousand times and there's a hundred times where his feet shuffled forward a step he didn't remember taking, until only one remained and he finally realized what was about to happen unless he stumbled away from the ledge _now_.

 

Human error. His one weakness, despite being _more than human_.

 

 

_Of falling backwards,_

 

 

Loki pitches him from his own tower, one hand around his neck flinging him through the window like a ragdoll until he is in free fall, and he feels a surge of terror, because the wind is whipping around him, making loose hair and cloth fly wildly, and there is nothing between him and the ground but empty, open air.

 

And he fears the fall, but he pushes it down, until that's under the rug too, and tilts until the air feels like a solid block underneath him and the bracelets are oriented the way they're meant to be.

 

But there's still that bottomless feeling in the pit of his stomach.

 

But then the metal closes around him, and he _soars_.

 

 

_Falling backwards_

 

 

The mothership is massive. It's a hulking mass of machinery, forces flowing like water away from it and towards him. He sees countless Leviathans, millions of soldiers, like ants answering to one massive queen, one swarm that will eat his world to shreds.

 

JARVIS has cut out in his ear, and that frightens him more than anything else, because he is alone here, in this place so many light years away where he can still see the streets of his home.

 

He detaches from the nuke, watches it fly toward a death for the Earth.

 

Only then does he realize he can't breathe.

 

 _Oh._ He thinks, realizing the key component he would need to even try to get away, _this suit doesn't have reserve oxygen._

 

 _Oh,_ he thinks, looking at this problem that for once, he _can't solve._

 

_I'm going to die._

 

But he keeps his eyes open, holds his breath until it has to rattle out, and watches the flames bloom as the nuke goes off, a strange starburst without gravity to keep it in orderly shape.

 

And then he can't breathe, can't speak, can't survive, and his Arc sings him a lullaby into death.

 

His eyes close.

 

(There is a tug at his back, pulling him, saying, You Shouldn't Be Here, Little One, Go Back To Your Home.)

 

(he doesn't have a home, he wants to say, he doesn't want to go back)

 

(You Are A Home, it counters, You Are A Place And A Person, A Haven And A Man.)

 

(let me die, he pleads, i'm tired. please just let me die.)

 

(I'm Sorry. it says, and truly is.)

 

He wakes up to a roar and to Steve telling him that they won.

 

 _You won,_ he keeps behind his tongue, spitting out something out shawarma instead, _I lost what I wanted._

 

 

_I've been worried all my life_

 

 

He sees Doctor Banner for the first time and thinks, _there is a man that I can call a friend and a beast I can call ally._ He sees his mind move in its hypnotic ways, the way he shuffles along like a scared mouse and prowls like a predator, keeps a growl hidden behind pleasing words, hides sharp teeth behind smiling lips.

 

He sees an enigma, a contradiction of a man that has tamed a wolf and then became the wolf itself.

 

He sees someone who has walked a thousand hells and rules every single one.

 

He sees someone who needs, but never allows himself close enough to want.

 

He worries for this oxymoron in human form, even before he tells tales of wanting the end, of pleading for it with a bullet, of never getting it.

 

He worries for him, and so he tames the wolf-tamer-wolf, brings him back and doesn't speak of how high buildings seem from the top until you calculate the odds of a death on impact. Doesn't speak of white light claiming him but leaving him unscathed. Doesn't speak of fours and a phoenix.

 

He speaks of innovation instead. Of power and intelligence, of the end of so many things that rule humankind as a whole.

 

He speaks, and behind every word is an apology.

 

He worries for him.

 

 

’ _til one day I had enough_

 

 

“Did you know?” He says, voice shaking but still calm, palms itching beneath the metal gloves, itching to wrap a hand around his throat and do the same as his _bestie_ did to his mother.

 

“Yes.”

 

The word burns his mind, his mouth, his eyes, scorches and scours better than any decade in the Afghani desert would've done. Burns him to a skeleton and sends the dust of his bones flying away.

 

(I don't like it when my teammates keep secrets from me.)

 

_(Steve, you fucking hypocrite)_

 

  
_Of this exercise of trust_

 

 

“Rhodes!” he yells, he screams, he chokes on the word and it spills out as he watches a star fall with no fuel to keep it burning.

 

_(C'mon, I don't have all day, genius.)_

 

His heart is in his throat, and he can't breathe, can't breathe, and he is voiceless and silent and _screaming_.

 

Rhodey _f a l l s_

 

Tony can't catch him.

 

  
_I leaned in and let it hurt_

 

 

Three weeks after Sokovia, he visits the crater the city had once been in.

 

It's not a publicity stunt or anything, he wears one of the glitchy as hell nano-masks that he's managed to perfect for one face and one face only. There are people there, taking videos and picture and wide shots, and there is a garden worth of flowers laid down over the site even now, cards and mementos left behind in memorial of the people who lost their lives.

 

He stands by the edge, closes his eyes, and can almost hear Ultron.

 

_I could've been perfect. I could've been beautiful. You could've made me beautiful._

 

But it wasn't Tony's job to make his children perfect, or beautiful. They had to choose to do it themselves. It's only testament to just how human Ultron was that he believed that Tony would have to fix him, that he thought he would fix himself, and why not everyone else in the process?

 

He bows his head, and goes to stand by the makeshift memorial.

 

There were fifty-nine people who didn't make it off Sokovia before it disintegrated. Dead or alive, it didn't matter.

 

Fifty-nine faces, fifty-nine lives, fifty-nine names.

 

He stands by the flowers, and recites them all, quietly. For those who get them, he will attend every funeral, under his mask.

 

 _Where is Tony Stark?_ The parents, the children, the relatives, the activists will say, _his face was not in the crowd of these mourners. He doesn't care for any of this destruction he's waged on us._

 

And, like with the mask of Iron Man, he will not move, will not take it off. He will mourn them with tears and sleepless nights, with a list he recites every night before he ever even tries to sleep, with every new innovation and every new mark he will make on this world, he will mourn them.

 

 _Where were you when Sokovia happened?_ Some of the people that just come for the moment to share at the next dinner party ask him at every funeral.

 

 _Work._ He will answer every time. He does not say _work built on the flesh and blood and bone that we're grieving for today, work in Sokovia, work bringing down my son who killed these people._

 

He sets down a yellow rose with red edges and walks away.

 

  
_Let my body feel the dirt_

 

 

He visits graves of those he knew very infrequently. They're all lain to rest in the same graveyard.

 

He goes in a gray trenchcoat that Jarvis used to wear. He brings four bouqets. Daisies and tulips for Ana, orchids and pink carnations for Maria, rue and scarlet lilies for Jarvis, and yellow and red roses for Howard.

 

He sets each one down, the pair of Howard and Maria's graves found first, tall and proud and loud in a way Howard would've shrugged impassively at and Maria would've hated.

 

Ana and Jarvis however, he spends some time by. He stands by their graves, not saying anything, or even moving for that matter. They both have simple graves. _Here lies Ana Lotte Jarvis, 1902-85_ with a daisy engraved. _Here lies Edwin Darcy Jarvis, 1900-92 He believed in something._

 

His epitaph is gloriously vague, but now it just reminds Tony of another man with a bland smile and blander sense of humor.

 

_(Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes)_

 

Tony sinks to his knees between the two graves, lets the grass and dirt beneath his knees remind him of where he is.

 

Unfeeling stone stares impassively back.

 

  
_When I break pattern, I break ground_

 

 

(I see a suit of armor around the world.)

 

(he doesn't say, I see pain and fire every time I close my eyes, I burnt my life to pieces and walked out alive, I need to make sure others survive the flames too.)

 

(The power to make real change, and that _terrifies_ you)

 

(he doesn't have to say i've seen more worlds burn than people you've killed, i've gone through every possible variable and finally found the one that causes this)

 

(I think I would just cut the wire.)

 

(he doesn't want to say that he would cut it with his own fingernails, his own teeth if he had to.)

 

(They're doomed.)

 

(he can't say without me to fix them, without you to guide them, because he understands futility now.)

 

(You're unbearably naive)

 

(he doesn't need to say but i'm so proud of you, of what you've become, of what you will be and i'm glad that you're at least part of my legacy)

 

  
_I rebuild when I break down_

 

 

In the aftermath of the 'Civil War' as the news outlets decided to call it, Tony Stark isn't seen for two whole months.

 

People speculate, news anchors differ in opinion, it's the hottest debate out there between those who think he's dead, or he's injured too much to come to the public, or that he's alive and just ignoring his mistakes again.

 

A man with a bland, forgettable face visits the public made monuments by the crumpled tunnels in Bucharest, in Lagos, in Vienna, visits the grave of one Margaret Elizabeth Carter, and leaves behind a yellow and red rose at every site.

 

At the two month mark exactly, SI releases hundred of new designs, a landslide of updates to their products, and James Rhodes, honorably discharged after his injuries in the Leipzig Conflict, posts a single candid photo of Tony Stark, wearing a pair of worn jeans and a tank top that covers only part of the white bandages swathing his chest, eyes narrowed with focus and eyebrows drawn together, hair disheveled and unstyled as he makes some strange gesture to the thin blue hologram that Rhodes is careful to keep obscured, bags heavy and dark under his eyes. The caption reads 'he's alive and creating, but not really okay'.

 

When asked at his first press conference what happened after Leipzig, since he'd brought Captain America's shield and hung it directly behind him, he answered with a cold, sharp smile. “We had a difference of opinion.”

 

“On which opinions, Mr. Stark?”

 

“Whether or not hypocrisy should be allowed to fester in a team environment. Next question.”

 

  
_I wake up more awake than I've ever been before_

 

 

He wakes up with no Arc Reactor in his chest.

 

He stares down at his chest for five straight minutes, trying to come to terms with the disturbing lack of humming, of the mechanical noise that's kept him sane for god knows how long. There is no song that makes him slowly relax and soothes his broken-edged dreams into something resembling compliance.

 

There is nothing. That scares him.

 

“Is it nice having that off your chest?” Happy cracks a joke when they both see each other for the first time since his mansion blew up.

 

He shrugs, and takes a fry from the take out he brought Happy.

 

(he doesn't say that he is lonely, that the arc is gone and now he doesn't know what to do but create but he can't because he is noah without his ark/c and he is slowly suffocating on his own too-small breaths.)

 

 

_Still I’m pinned under the weight of what I believed would keep me safe_

 

 

“Our name is a weapon, a _shield_ , Tony,” Howard had said, with eyes made of steel and a heart with no room for a son left in between dreams of a better tomorrow and the new missile designs, “Use it every chance you get.”

 

But _Stark_ becomes less of a shield and more of a curse. He lives, he works, he creates and builds and breathes innovation until he hyperventilates from the panic attacks, but all they ever see is 'Tony Stark, son of Howard Stark' until all they ever see is Howard's face, his motives, his mind over his son's.

 

Tony Stark has to learn how to pay for the sins of the father from the first time he's kidnapped until the end of time, and he will pay a hundredfold and will still never appease them.

 

Killian is his fault, yes, he will own up to that. His arrogance, his genius alone made that demon his own.

 

But Obadiah and Vanko and Pym to some degree all wanted him to pay for his father's slights.

 

So the name Stark is a gold shield, flashy and heavy but useless, the name Stark is a weapon turned upon the bearer.

 

Some people are born with demons. Some create their own. And others have demons sloughed onto them.

 

_  
So show me where my armor ends_

 

 

(Big man in a suit of armor, take that off, what are you?)

(Your father was a better man than you'll ever be, stop pretending you can even measure up)

 

(Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist)

(More than he was, more than he would ever be, greater than him and better than him)

 

(You better stop pretending to be a hero)

(He was better, better than you, greater than you, you shame his memory)

 

(unsaid, unspoken, are a million words that never fall from Tony's lips, don't talk to me like i don't know war like i'm not fighting in one right now, bleeding and dying and loving/hating ever goddamn second of it. don't speak to me of howard, of the man you knew and ruined, don't talk to me about pretending to be a hero, you don't deserve to carry that shield you don't deserve to lecture me about everything before the ice, like you were reborn or remade any better than i was. i'm a futurist rogers and i am fire and ash and your worst nightmare and i can kill you with a snap of my fingers or draw it out as long as i damn well please, i can destroy you so completely and utterly you will crave death before i give it to you.)

 

_  
Show me where my skin begins_

 

 

He is a mess of cuts and bruises and scars. Every day he goes out and comes back just a little bit worse, just a little more hurt, a little more broken. He hides it behind Armani suits and expensive sunglasses and – when he has to – layers of foundation and concealer until he looks untouchable. Until he is everything they expect from the Iron Man, a perfect being, someone who doesn't favor his left side, because his ribs are definitely not messed up six ways to sunday.

 

And then later that night, after he struggles out of his layers, after he peels off his bandages in the lab, Butterfingers will go very, very professional and lose all of its dorky clumsiness, because this is what it was built for, his many medical emergencies.

 

And while his pieces are brought back together, he will recite names under his breath like gospel.

 

_  
Like a final puzzle piece it all makes perfect sense to me…_

 

 

After the fact, after Siberia and every single damning revelation, he will look at it all and laugh, and keep laughing until his ribs hurt even more and his arm is in serious danger, until he is gulping and gasping for air he will never get enough of, until tears are streaming down his cheeks and the laughs turn to sobs, until he is sore and tired and begging for the end.

 

The Compound is empty for now, leaving him alone with that god damn phone and the ashes of a letter he burnt as soon as he could, and so he is left alone to fall to the ground and keep falling until he feels like Vision, buried thirty floors deep and aching with loss.

 

Because it makes so much fucking sense. It makes so much sense that his head spins and he can't see straight and he's trying to clutch onto concrete floor like a lifeline and he's waiting, begging for air that he isn't getting.

 

After Siberia, he will be reborn once more.

 

_  
The heaviness that I hold in my heart belongs to gravity_

 

 

Rogers broke four ribs, cracked three, and bruised three more in his final bid to make Tony Stark stop.

 

But he did not want Tony Stark end, which is ironic, because Tony sat there and waited for him to do just that, to give him the excuse he finally needed to leave.

 

And so, he returns back to his workshop broken and beaten but never shattered, and built Rhodey new legs, built the world a better shield than the organization that bore its name, that the name Stark ever was for him. He looked to the sky, saw stars and thought of races coming to claim his home, and thought _let them try._

 

The phoenix fades, fire burning out and falling into ashes. It will not be reborn. Instead, it makes its own ashes into a weapon, into a shield. It's name is Stark and it has died six times and come back each and every time.

 

It will guard Earth as a dragon's hoard, as something close and precious and unspeakably rare, because it was born on it six times over from the wrongdoings of those upon it, and it still fights for the planet and the people who live on it.

 

His name is Stark and he will bleed for every last inch of ground.

 

_  
The heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity_

 

 

After everything is done and over with, Tony stands outside the doors to the hall where all the press are gathered and stands tall. He is dressed to the nines, staring straight forward, his stomach in his throat and his heart somewhere around his right pinky toe. Pepper stand next to him, cold, severe, breathlessly beautiful but just too ethereal to be entirely true. “I loved you once.” She says, tilting her chin up just a bit more to keep that one stubborn strand back.

 

“And we both know that once was a long time ago.” Tony replies.

 

Pepper's lips curls up on one side in a smirk, “I hated you once, too.”

 

He makes a tiny 'ha' sound that doesn't really count as a laugh, “We both know you still do.”

 

“Ms. Potts? Mr. Stark?” An assistant steps in from behind them, “They're ready for you.”

 

Because here's the thing about gravity. It will feel like it's tugging you down constantly, but all it's really trying to do is center you, keep you balanced and careful, keep you wary of the fall. Ultron was right, there was something beautifully inevitable about rising to fall.

 

He'd once believed it was a terrible thing, the futility of rising. He'd once thought that falling was terrible, terrifying.

 

But here's the thing about the word 'once'. It doesn't define the always.

 

So he links arms with Pepper, and they step out to the sound of clicking camera shutters that sound like gunshots and barking animals and a rising rabble of voices that sound like dying screams and a restless ocean.

 

“Hello ladies and gentlemen and those undefined,” he says into the microphone, Pepper standing proud and strong by him, his own little piece of gravity, “My name is Anthony Edward Stark.

 

“And I'm here to talk about the end of the world.”

 


End file.
